Turkish auto market aims for over $32B exports in 2019

“As the automotive industry, we are aiming to overcome all difficulties and to close this year with an increase in exports. In this direction, we set our export target in 2019 to be $32 billion,” Baran Celik, the chief executive officer of OIB, said in a statement.

Celik said that Turkish automotive sector’s exports reached $31.6 billion in 2018 with an increase of 11 percent compared to 2017, noting that Turkey left behind another year full of records.

“Last year, we achieved an export average of $2.63 billion on a monthly basis,” he added.

On the other hand, Turkey’s car and light commercial vehicle sales in 2018 fell 35 percent year-onyear, according to the Automotive Distributors’ Association (ODD).

A total of 620,937 automobiles and light commercial vehicles were sold last year, down from 956,194 in 2017, the association said in a statement. Cars constituted most of last year’s sales, with 486,321 automobiles sold, down 33 percent from a year earlier.